The countdown begins!

I have now booked my flights to Malawi! I managed to save a couple of hundred quid by taking a 31 hour trip back, but this does mean that I get to spend a night in Addis Ababa (the capital of Ethiopia) which should be pretty interesting.

I have also now arranged to visit Pump Aid's operations in southern Malawi. They are a highly successful charity which have installed several thousand hand powered rope pumps for rural communities in Zimbabwe and are now expanding their operations into Malawi and Mozambique. They have a lot of invaluable experience not only in the technical aspects, but also in the very important sociological side of things, which is often the downfall of projects like this. I hope to learn as much as possible from them when I visit their workshop and the site of one of their installations when I first arrive in Malawi.

SolarAid's contacts at the University of Mzuzu's Department of Energy Studies (located in the north of Malawi) have agreed to host the prototype solar powered rope pump. This is great news, as I will be able to take advantage not only of their vast knowledge of solar energy, but also of their solar panels, wells and boreholes. This will save the project a huge amount of time and money. It will also allow a lot more configurations (of flow rates and pumping depths) to be tested, which in turn will increase the range of sites the solar pump will be able to comfortably cater for. All in all, it should be a very worthwhile trip!

Please support our work and donate to this project.

Thank you,

Cai